If you walked into my living room right now, you'd see a plastic tote on the bottom of our book shelf. It is filled with scrapbooking material. On top of that box, is a layer of dust. It hasn't been opened since February. I desperately want to scrap our cruise memories, but with little time between homeschooling, volunteering, household duties and product reviews, it just doesn't get done. There has to be an easier way I thought. And there is. Blurb and their BookSmart Software gave me the chance to get those memories together, and create a professional photo book of my very own.

I chose to make a 24 page 8x10 softcover photo book.

First I downloaded the software. Be patient. It's a large download. What you end up with when it's finished downloading though is a great program, where literally the sky's the limit. After taking a tutorial on how to set up my book, I was ready to create.

The number of page layouts you can choose from is staggering. The process while making your book is so easy. You can change page layouts midstream, change pictures, text, really anything you want to change once you've started is easy to do.


One of the best features is that when adding your pictures or text you will get a (!) if it is too large for the page or if the resolution is too low and won't print well.

The whole process to create my photo book from start to finish took me about 2.5 hours. I did it all in one sitting, but with the handy save feature you certainly can start and come back to it at a later time.

After I submitted my book to Blurb, it was printed and shipped quickly. My 24 page book including shipping only cost $28.44. That is equivalent to or less than what 24 traditional scrapbook pages would cost to make.

I'm a bit of a control freak though and these were my Disney Cruise memories, so the only thing left to wonder after I completed making my photo book was "would Blurb do them justice?" The pages looked great on my preview screen but how about in the actual book?


The quality is amazing! I am so happy with my book. I definitely recommend this service to anyone who is looking to make a book of any kind!

Blurb has so much potential. I can think of a ton of ways you could use this.

* Homeschool - for a yearbook, to publish a story your child has written, a portfolio of your child's artwork

* Vacations - capture your memories in separate books for each vacation or compile them in one

* Celebrations - perfect gifts for silver and golden anniversaries, graduations and wedding experiences

* Genealogies - what a great way to share your family history

I'm sure you can think of a dozen other ways that you would fill a book made with Blurb! You can check out the Blurb Bookstore at www.blurb.com/bookstore for more inspiration.

I'm so excited that when we come back from our transatlantic cruise next year, I can get a great book filled with memories, for a great price.

THANK YOU BLURB!

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